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Egalitarianism and social chaos

Besides offering complicated career advice for graduate students, Nate Kreuter explains at Inside Higher Ed why he prefers that his students address him by his first name:

In my own case I have resisted this advice, and I personally prefer to be addressed by my first name by all students. The formalities of a title do reinforce institutional hierarchies and make it easier for new and/or young professors to command respect in the classroom. However, I am more interested in having students begin to see themselves as adults than in reinforcing my institutional status. I feel strongly that part of the social development that takes place in undergraduate education involves students beginning to perceive themselves as adults, and learning to communicate in an adult-to-adult fashion, rather than in a student-to-adult fashion.

This feeling applies even more strongly for me in the case of graduate students. I want the graduate students I interact with to begin seeing themselves as intellectual peers and colleagues, if they don’t already. Admittedly, no matter how formal or informal you are about your title, there is still an enormous power differential between a tenure-track assistant professor and undergraduate or graduate students. I feel though, in my own case, that I am most invested in helping students to see themselves as adults and peers, rather than as only students.

I was heartened by some of the dissenting, traditionalist views expressed in the comments, but I think it's undeniable that an increasing number of academics in the United States prefer to be called by their first names, viewing honorifics as pretentious and arrogant. The blame for this social calamity can be placed squarely at the feet of Marxist sociology, which more or less permeates society today. For the Marxist everything is reduced to power relationships, including titles and formalities. The use of honorifics exposes power relationships that are not supposed to exist (better translated as "you're not supposed to notice") in our egalitarian society, interfering with the liberal's preferred method changing reality by ignoring it.

The first thing we know about any professor who rejects honorifics is that he defines his own position primarily in terms of power and privilege rather than knowledge or accomplishment, regarding the former as instruments of oppression. He feels embarrassed or guilty about this and prefers not to be reminded by his title. He has little respect for his own achievement, considering it something anyone else could do - which sounds deceptively humble. Behind the facade of humility there are some disturbing corollaries. It usually follows that such a man has even less respect for the achievements of others, which he thinks anyone else might have easily accomplished, most especially himself. He views many of those who fail to reach his own level of achievement with either pity or contempt, as the only legitimate explanations for inequality in his egalitarian mind are: a) oppression; or b) moral fault.

Of course it is a mistake to reduce honorifics and titles denoting hierarchy to "power relationships". The first mistake is to assume that power is wrongly or unjustly held unless equally distributed. The second mistake is to overlook the more important realities underlying hierarchical systems - ontological, social, familial, and meritocratic. The reality is that egalitarian systems are born of pride: if no man owes me special honors, then I owe no special honor to any man. It's that simple.

Memo to all professors: your honorific title is not about you. It's about what you represent, not whether you consider yourself worthy. It's about upholding a culture of respect for elders, for teachers, and for knowledge - a culture of humility - without which learning is impossible. A teacher with the grace of humility is perfectly willing to be considered proud by the ignorant for the sake of encouraging humility in his students. Please don't tell your students they are your peers, or your equals, or your colleagues - they are nothing of the kind. They come to you for your knowledge, experience and wisdom, because they believe that you have something they lack. That astounding fact should humble you far more than having students call you "Joe".

Comments (47)

"He has little respect for his own achievement, considering it something anyone else could do"

What is the basis of that assertion?

"For the Marxist everything is reduced to power relationships, including titles and formalities. The use of honorifics exposes power relationships that are not supposed to exist (better translated as "you're not supposed to notice")...Of course it is a mistake to reduce honorifics and titles denoting hierarchy to "power relationships". The first mistake is to assume that power is wrongly held unless equally distributed."

I see nothing in the professor's comments that suggests that he subscribes to any of the positions you describe.

I sort of agree with the guy who was quoted disapprovingly here. Grad students are on their way to being peers of the professors. Some students have had work accepted for publication before getting their Ph.D. There's no sharp line between the work done by a Ph.D. candidate and that done by a post-doc or even that done by a professor. In that one sense - the most important sense at a research university - Ph.D. candidates are sometimes already the peers of professors.

The difference I have with this guy is in how one would "communicate in an adult-to-adult fashion, rather than in a student-to-adult fashion." The best way to do that is for the professor to address the student as Mr. or Ms. I'd propose the same for other interactions, such as physician-patient. If the relationship is close enough, they can mutually agree (often implicitly) to call each other by first name.

One difference between those two types of interaction: it makes more sense to call a physician Dr. than to call a professor or other Ph.D.-holder that. I think that every faculty member at the University of Virginia is a Mr. or Ms., regardless of whether they have a Ph.D., and it doesn't seem to have damaged the "culture of respect" there.

So this is my utopian proposal: everybody at a university - undergrad, grad student, faculty member, or administrator - is a Mr. or Ms. in university-related interactions, until they agree otherwise.

I was also wondering the same thing kzndr asked. When Jeff Culbreath described the mental states of professors who prefer to be addressed by their first names, how many such acquaintances was he basing that on?

Memo to all professors: your honorific title is not about you. It's about what you represent, not whether you consider yourself worthy. It's about upholding a culture of respect for elders, for teachers, and for knowledge - a culture of humility - without which learning is impossible. A teacher with the grace of humility is perfectly willing to be considered proud by the ignorant for the sake of encouraging humility in his students. Please don't tell your students they are your peers, or your equals, or your colleagues - they are nothing of the kind. They come to you for your knowledge, experience and wisdom, because they believe that you have something they lack. That astounding fact should humble you far more than having students call you "Joe".

Memo to Jeff Culbreath: just because a professor allows students to call her by her first name, it doesn't mean the professor sees her students as her equal. As kzndr pointed out, the position you ascribe to such profs is probably not at all why such profs behave as they do. Moreover, the mere fact that a prof allows students to call her by her first name doesn't mean she sees her students as equals in all regards. After all, she's in front of the classroom precisely because she's an expert in the subject matter of the course, and the students are there to learn from her. Many profs can make that clear without relying on irrelevant and silly social hierarchies.

"The first thing we know about any professor who rejects honorifics is that he defines his own position primarily in terms of power and privilege rather than knowledge or accomplishment. He has little respect for his own achievement, considering it something anyone else could do - which sounds deceptively humble. Behind the facade of humility there are some disturbing corollaries. It often follows that such a man has even less respect for the achievements of others, which he thinks anyone else could have easily accomplished, most especially himself. He might also view those who fail to reach his own level of achievement with either pity or contempt..."

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint my colleague by coming down on the more or less non-traditionalist side on this one. Having spent some twenty-five years either directly in the academic world or at least in close association with it, I would say that the above statement is a psychologizing shot in the dark and often untrue even about a professor who _asks_ his students to call him by his first name. It is completely out in left field (or right field) about a professor who merely _allows_ his students to call him by his first name or who doesn't mind one way or the other. Either one might be motivated by some sort of egalitarian ideology, and the former (the one who really prefers the first name) is somewhat more likely to be so. But often, not. In either case, it's simply unjustified to psychologize and say that the professor is more likely to have contempt for his students, etc. One can imagine someone who would be like that--a teacher who insists on a faux equality using first names while actually being manipulative and power hungry. This would be like a sort of bad Dilbert cartoon: “Call me Joe,” while planning to stab you in the back. But to imply that contempt for students or a reduction of the academic relationship to power is particularly likely simply because the professor asks for or permits non-honorific address is just going way out there into the world of ideological conjecture.

I certainly see an important point to the use of honorifics by young children, especially in the teacher-pupil relationship. By the time we are talking about graduate students, the whole matter is one of style. A professor may have a highly traditionalist style, so that the use of honorifics is part of the old-fashioned (in the good sense) cultural set-up Jeff describes. But for another professor-student relationship, it may be merely a habit. Yet another professor may have a more casual outward style and may permit his students to use his first name but be so manifestly master of his subject that their respect for him, entirely founded on his evident knowledge, cannot be impaired in the least by the use of first names.

In yet other cases graduate students may have too much respect for their professors and feel unable to challenge their views. This can happen either with or without honorifics, but the very fact that even by the time we reach college, much less graduate school, it becomes entirely plausible that a student will _in fact_ have the right of it and the professor be wrong, and even that the student may have researched a given sub-field and know as much or more about it as the professor is relevant to the use of honorifics.

And so it goes. The matter is really not one for dogmatism. It is one of the areas where I am quite willing to say that it is fine for cultural norms to be fluid both temporally and spatially.

All that being said, the author of the Higher Ed. article, Kreuter, seems a bit dogmatic about the matter in the opposite direction. And this understandably comes across as pretentious and ideological. It seems fairly silly to _pressure_ your students to call you by your first name. It would be more valuable to the students to use that same energy to help them get to the point where they can write papers worthy of publication, thus keeping the focus where it should be--on the discipline and on increasing their real expertise in that discipline.

I see nothing in the professor's comments that suggests that he subscribes to any of the positions you describe.

Oh, it's all there. You might need to give it another read. The author suggests that one is not fully grown-up, that one is not fully an adult, if one has superiors and addresses them as such. He contrasts "adult-adult" relationships with "student-adult" relationships, as though being a student were something degrading, as though one could not be a student and an adult at the same time! He indicates that the only thing justifying honorifics is the "enormous power differential" between tenure-track professors and students. He wants his students to consider themselves his peers - his equals - before demonstrating this equality, and with full knowledge that most of them never will.

The whole Marxian "power relationships" paradigm ought to induce nausea in any traditionalist. A Latin scholar with a doctorate is "Dr. So-and-so" to his students whether he is the Dean of Humanities at Ivy League U. or Junior Dishwasher at Rosie's Diner when he is not tutoring on the side.

Most things worth having are earned. Equality is one of them. The professor has both imposed something and stolen something from his students. If his desire to be seen differently and to relate differently is legitimate, his method is not.

In yet other cases graduate students may have too much respect for their professors and feel unable to challenge their views. This can happen either with or without honorifics, but the very fact that even by the time we reach college, much less graduate school, it becomes entirely plausible that a student will _in fact_ have the right of it and the professor be wrong, and even that the student may have researched a given sub-field and know as much or more about it as the professor is relevant to the use of honorifics.

Lydia, I don't think this is relevant at all. A student may be right and a professor wrong on whatever question, a student more learned than his professor on whatever topic, but the student remains a student and his professor remains a professor throughout their relationship. I can see how this relationship might change once the student becomes a genuine colleague, but even then, I think it best for the one-time student to always refer to his one-time professor in the same way, as there is no catching up in years or experience.

Indeed, one of the most important signs of maturity and character is the ability to honor superiors for their social position alone - even in the face of their defects, errors, or perceived inferiority in one aspect or another. And I would argue that unless one is capable of giving such honor, one is not fully an adult.

Memo to Jeff Culbreath: just because a professor allows students to call her by her first name, it doesn't mean the professor sees her students as her equal.

Memo to Tod: I'm in a good mood this morning and will not censure your first violation. For future reference, though, we use the masculine pronoun in my comment threads when the sex of the antecedent is indeterminate. Otherwise, you are free to throw out the rules of pronoun agreement and use the plural if you don't mind looking silly. The sentence quoted above is considered offensive. Cheers.

Indeed, one of the most important signs of maturity and character is the ability to honor superiors for their social position alone - even in the face of their defects, errors, or perceived inferiority in one aspect or another. And I would argue that unless one is capable of giving such honor, one is not fully an adult.

I'm not entirely sure I agree with this, but granting it for the sake of the argument, it doesn't follow that every professor-student relationship needs somehow to illustrate this point.

It seems to me, Jeff, that you just need more experiences of student-teacher relationships that don't involve the honorific but that do involve a great deal of respect, yes, on the basis of the teacher's real mastery of the subject, and the value that that has. That is to say, these are social arrangements and can serve a variety of purposes. There is a particular value and charm to the situation in which the student always calls the professor by the honorific. But there can also be a particular value and charm to the situation in which the student does not and the professor is greatly respected on the basis of his knowledge of a mutually loved discipline. Perhaps one way one could think of it would be in terms of sports or mountain-climbing or some other masculine enterprise: You call the guide "Joe" but you darned well listen to him when he tells you how to get out of a tricky climbing situation. There's a combination of respect and affection for the professor, camaradarie, and love of the enterprise by all that can be well-served by the use of first names all around.

In many ways these things are sui generis. You have to have some experience with them before you can see their worth, and it really doesn't do to rule out such a thing a priori as inappropriate.

I dunno. It's like saying that all wives have to refer to their husbands in exactly the same terms--that it's always inappropriate for a wife to get into the habit of calling her husband "Daddy" when talking to her children, to the point that she does it even when they are grown. You can't lay down rules for these things like that. You have to allow some flexibility for the formation of relationships with different flavors.

For the record, I am not going to start calling Lydia or Steve by their honorific titles. There are many reasons for that, but the most relevant one is that neither one asks or expects to be addressed that way. Even if they were to expect it, unless it is fairly distributed among all other commentators I wouldn't feel obligated to comply. I'm not going to play a game where simply because I am opposed to someone's arguments that requires me to address them formally. On the other hand, if friend and foe alike are expected or requested to use a formal title, I am happy to comply with that social convention.

I'm tending to agree with Lydia here. While I think it behooves both students and professors for students to use an honorific in the undergraduate years -- because so many of our young people now come to us with little to no understanding of decorum and even less genuine respect for anyone, and their manner of addressing us helps us to teach them these things -- I think it's certainly a matter of preference and convention in the graduate years. (Though at one college where I taught it was common for the students to call us by our first names and the only ones I *ever* had trouble with were some of those who called me "Dr."! This suggests to me that the place of respect in local culture has a lot to do with this issue.)

I remember an incident with one professor when I was in graduate school. I taught on MWF and took courses on TR. I ran into this professor on a Monday in the department office where we were both busied with preparing handouts for our classes and called him by his first name (the first time I'd ever done so, though I'd heard some of the other grad students do so). Afterwards, I felt very embarrassed and hoped he hadn't thought of me as terribly presumptuous. The next day I was passing him in the hallway and "corrected" my "error" by calling him "Mr. X." He stopped, turned around, and said, "So yesterday I'm Doug and today I'm Mr.? What's up with that?" He had simply taken my use of his first name as normal.

He never asks or encourages his *undergrads* to call him by his first name (nor do any of the professors there that I know of), but he and his colleagues took it as completely normal that those who taught alongside them could call them by their first names, even if we were in their classes. Believe me, there was no lack of respect among the graduate students at that university for our professors. They commanded respect by their mastery of the subject matter, by their dignity, and by the respect they showed us as growing scholars who were also their colleagues in the department. We not only taught, but served on department committees, some of our better ideas even being implemented, but we never, ever thought of ourselves as at the same level; rather, we knew that we were amazingly privileged to be taught by these experts and given the opportunity to learn about teaching and departmental governance by them, as well as learning about their subject areas in their classes. I have been grateful every day for my experiences there.

It seems to me, Jeff, that you just need more experiences of student-teacher relationships that don't involve the honorific but that do involve a great deal of respect, yes, on the basis of the teacher's real mastery of the subject, and the value that that has. That is to say, these are social arrangements and can serve a variety of purposes.

Oh, I grant that they can exist with great respect, etc. - I have such relationships myself with respected elders who insist that I use their first names - but I do maintain that such relationships are impoverished to the extent that language within the relationship does not reflect the underlying reality. I also concede there will always be special, exceptional cases with their own understandings, and that's fine. But what we're seeing here is the destruction of what ought to be, and always has been, an important social norm - i.e., we're seeing an ideological push to turn the exceptions into the rule.

By the way, insofar as this problem is fixable, it won't be through disturbing existing relationships that have already found their comfort level. My son is just now in the very awkward position of having to call his scoutmaster by his first name, which goes against everything he's ever been taught. Heck, I myself am uncomfortable calling him by his first name! (The scoutmaster is a fine man, by the way, to whom one naturally wants to offer as much respect as possible.) But we're not rocking the boat. Such is the norm for the troop. I think on an interpersonal level, the best policy is starting off with honorifics as a default but conforming to existing social norms when necessary for the sake of peace and order.

The only way to bring things back around is for institutions to encourage and even require the use of honorifics. It's the same with everything else that is deteriorating - standards of dress, for instance. These things need to be re-institutionalized. And in order to re-establish these norms, institutions will need to be a little more heavy-handed than they were before everything went south. Once the norm is firmly entrenched again there can be more tolerance for the deviations. Christopher, for his part, says that if he ever grows up to lead a boy scout troop he's going to be called "mister" and that's that. :-)

Though respect for ability, achievement and professional status seems to be on the wane everywhere in England, students aren't encouraged to use their teachers' first names. It's not entirely unheard of course in 'progressive' schools and university departments, but perhaps some vestige of English reserve still lingers in most formal relationships.

I might be miles out, but suspect that the general lack of deference in American society makes it far more likely that students and teachers won't mind engaging on a first name basis. Yet I'd still be surprised to learn that patients in American hospitals, or in private consultation, might address doctors by their first names.

There's a story, which delights me though it's probably apocryphal, that on an 'official' visit to the US, the Duke of Edinburgh spoke to an American serviceman who in his reply addressed the Duke as 'pal'.

The only way to bring things back around is for institutions to encourage and even require the use of honorifics. It's the same with everything else that is deteriorating - standards of dress, for instance. These things need to be re-institutionalized. And in order to re-establish these norms, institutions will need to be a little more heavy-handed than they were before everything went south. Once the norm is firmly entrenched again there can be more tolerance for the deviations.

I'm with Tod on seeing professors as "merely" subject matter experts (SME). But as to what I quoted above, the problem I have with Jeff's analysis and also tying it to dress codes and "standardization" is that it is entirely a cultural preference. To arrtribute the moral absolutes to the things is i think a grave mistake. In the US, the dynamics of formalism reflect strong religious and regional understandings For example, think of the Protestant theology bearing on dress or the extreme regional differences (east vs west) at the time of the Civil War in dress or respect for formality (which still exist with less strength,) or lack thereof. I'm still on vacation, but it is fitting that while abroad I can point out that the article is devoid of any American traditional sensibilities on the matter. My mother to her dying day will insist that her children's qualities and attainments, insofar as they were provided for by parental stewardship, were made possible in part because of the value judgement inherent in an intentional deprecation of the trivialities of formalism, even with dress. This is a very Midwestern and Western view of things, and one with a deep and long history. In religious and regional terms, Jeff's view is Eastern and/or Catholic. Mine is both Western and Protestant The latter view is, of course, superior. It isn't an accident that Im typing this on an iPhone designed by the 2nd largest company in the nation in market cap (and soon to be 1st) in California. Only outside of the burdens of an obsequious formality can higher and complex collabertion take place to produce such marvels. My mother understands why.

I think the scoutmaster himself should adapt. If Christopher calls him "Mr.," he needn't say, "Call me Joe." He should be willing to accept the more formal set-up with the young person who initiates it. As I said above, being pushy about it in that direction is a problem as well.

But remember too, Jeff, that the scouts are not graduate students. They aren't even undergraduate students. They aren't even adults. It seems to me that perhaps you aren't recognizing the force of some of the things Beth and I have said or even the force of what many people think of as a common sense continuum that to some extent tracks age and attainment among students. I myself said above that I see important points to having children call adults, and especially teachers (and I might have said scout leaders) by a title. Many years and much learning have passed between that and graduate school, and as Beth pointed out (highly relevantly) the grad students often _are_ the colleagues of their own professors insofar as they also teach undergraduate students.

Again, I'm not dogmatically saying on the other side that graduate students _should_ call their professors by their first names. By no means. You will be pleased to know that I _still_ call my dissertation director "Dr." even in letters, though he (bless his heart) suggested gently that it would be fine if I dropped it after I was no longer his student. He's a southern gentleman, and the "Dr." fits with the entire relationship. I'm just saying that I don't see the matter as being as big a deal as you do.

I would guess we would disagree about dress, as well, Jeff. I certainly would be fine with having institutions try to require modesty in dress, though at this point it's probably futile for large, secular institutions. But to require that all girls wear dresses to class and that men not wear denim pants, that professors wear ties and possibly even suits, all of which I'm guessing from other things you have written that you would want--no, I don't see that as a goal to be pursued.

I remember reading in a book by Jacques Barzun a quote by some 19th-century Englishman (I believe): “Formality is sufficiently revenged upon the world for being so unreasonably laughed at. It is destroyed, it is true. But it has the spiteful satisfaction of seeing everything else destroyed along with it.”

Many years and much learning have passed between that and graduate school, and as Beth pointed out (highly relevantly) the grad students often _are_ the colleagues of their own professors insofar as they also teach undergraduate students.

Well, when I was a graduate student in music, no one called the wind ensemble or orchestra directors by their first names and I had exactly the same credentials as they (a masters degree is sufficient in those areas) and today I have a doctorate, but it would still be considered incorrect of me to call them by their first names, while they function as conductors. Who would ever think to call Stokowski, Leo, during a rehearsal? I would never think of calling my dissertation director by his first name.

On the other hand, in the sciences, pretty much people call their research directors by their first names if there is also an extra-professional relationship - be it a common shared interest or just as drinkin' buddies (professors often take their research groups to lunch/dinner, but seldom out for drinks), but usually not while in a professional capacity, although that is not a hard and fast rule.

It all depends on social distances and context. For instance, when I was an undergraduate, I played in the university band and one of the deans played french horn. We did not call him dean (at least not all of the time). A related question came up on a Catholic sight - should you call a priest, Father, even if you know him, somewhat. The answer was, decidedly, yes, unless the priest says otherwise and even then, the title is always the safer thing. Priests have a different ontological character by virtue of their ordination. They are raised to the altar and the title acknowledges this. I have a dear female friend whose brother is a priest. Even though I have known her for twenty years and I helped her brother move her into her condo as well as spend time with the family, she gets to call him Pete, while I still call him, Father.

I don't even call some of my research colleagues by their first names, even though I been on several panels with them and have known them for many years. I will use their first names as an act of charity if they ask me to, but it just feels too intimate, somehow.

As for me, I tell my (undergraduate) students, "You many call me, Doctor, you may call me Mister, you may call me Professor, you may ignore calling me anything, but as long as you are my students, you cannot call me by my first name, alone, or my last name, alone." I make one exception: there is a very rare breed of student, not necessarily the best and brightest, who comes by my first name, naturally. I can't explain why. I just know that they have a rare jazz-like personality in the midst of a classical setting and it would seem strange for them to call me by my professional title. This has only happened once in about 2000 students.

In a world where the commandment to honor ones Father and Mother is being more and more ignored, teachers, who substitute, occasionally for one aspect of that honor (instructing the ignorant), are due the subrogation of a parent. Few call their parents by their first names, while they act as parents (which is always) and I submit that when teachers are acting as teachers, they should be given the same respect as parents, for they are the guardians and overseers of the education of those under them. Even if the student knows more on a specific topic, he is not their equal until the student - teacher relationship is shattered at graduation. So, I have to disagree with Beth, in part. One may be justified in using the first name when they are both involved in the same activity (as two teachers and he was not her advisor, I presume), but when a teacher mounts the dais, it is correct to refer to them by their title, if they have a subordinate and especially if they have a subrogative relationship to their student. I do not think that Nate Kreuter really understands that this is not an adult-adult thing. He has misframed the discussion. The relation of teacher and student is an old and venerable one and transcends the notion of adulthood. No man is ever the adult of his parents, in an ontological sense (medical needs, besides) and no student is above his teacher. Did not Christ say as much (Matt 10:24 - 25):

"A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master; it is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master."

We make near-eequivalence between graduate student and professor, but it is the professor who can graduate the student and not the other way around. By all means call your professor by his first name, but woe to the student who forgets who holds the sheepskin.

This is a very Midwestern and Western view of things, and one with a deep and long history. In religious and regional terms, Jeff's view is Eastern and/or Catholic. Mine is both Western and Protestant.

There is probably something to this analysis, Mark - but it's easy to overstate the case. I'm 44 years old and a fourth generation Californian. I remember my grandparent's generation, some of whom are still with us. When they went to dinner, no matter where it was, coats and ties were the norm. I know one such elderly gentleman (not a relative), now in his nineties, who still cannot abide the sight of young men at table with hats on their heads. There's a cattle town just north of here that has hosted a rodeo for 91 years. In the museum you will see early photographs with rodeo cowboys dressed in suits(!) - riding bulls, roping calves, and bucking broncos. But they dressed as was fitting for any public event, as did most spectators. Take a look at any newspaper from a Western city before the 1960s, Mark, and you will find little to support a theory of regional informality "with a deep and long history".

I've lived in academia for over twenty years now, and Jeff's description sounds seriously overgeneralized to me. (When I see a sentence that starts, "The first thing we know about any professor…", I almost have to start looking for counterexamples :-).) Even in the aggregate, though, I see more folks who insist rigorously on titles seemingly out of insecurity—as if the conferring of a Ph.D. effected some kind of ontological preferment over the rest of the species—than I see crypto-Marxists who reject their titles in the kind of false proletarianism Jeff describes. Conversely, I know at least one professor who does not use her title precisely out of a Christian desire to reflect the reality of the situation (that what we have here, in Kingdom terms, is one baptized person talking to another baptized person, and the baptismal reality dwarfs the academic one in importance).

So even Jeff's laudable interest in having language reflect the reality of the situation leads directly to the question, "Which reality?" After all, most social situations contain multiple realities (realities of ontology, of role, of social or economic status external to the currently-operative roles, etc.). Which one is most important to reflect? Surely one size does not fit all.

"I know at least one professor who does not use her title precisely out of a Christian desire to reflect the reality of the situation (that what we have here, in Kingdom terms, is one baptized person talking to another baptized person, and the baptismal reality dwarfs the academic one in importance)."

I think the scoutmaster himself should adapt. If Christopher calls him "Mr.," he needn't say, "Call me Joe." He should be willing to accept the more formal set-up with the young person who initiates it. As I said above, being pushy about it in that direction is a problem as well.

Well, he wasn't being pushy about it. He simply asked my son to call him by his first name, like the other boys. We're brand new and out of respect for his position, and the custom of the troop we have asked to join, that's what we're going with. This isn't a hill we're prepared to die on - alone.

It seems to me that perhaps you aren't recognizing the force of some of the things Beth and I have said or even the force of what many people think of as a common sense continuum that to some extent tracks age and attainment among students.

Having never been to graduate school, I have little experience observing grad students with their profs. I'm sure there is a certain unspoken culture about grad school relationships that one can only understand by experience. And I fault no one for conforming to whatever norm happens to be in place. I do the same, without apology, unless I am in some kind of position to establish a precedent. But it was once common for academic colleagues to address each other using honorifics, without there ever having been a student-teacher relationship, and furthermore it was common (and I think very appropriate) for teachers to address their adult students as "mister" and "miss". This is still true in some places. The formality might be dropped if a friendship developed in individual cases, but it set a respectful tone for all relationships right out of the gate. Somehow, I think if even popes and bishops manage to call their subordinate priests "father", then grad students can handle calling their teachers "professor" without feeling like a child.

Let's do get over the notions that: a) the role of a student is incompatible with adulthood; and b) a certain child-like disposition, when it comes learning, is degrading in an adult.

You will be pleased to know that I _still_ call my dissertation director "Dr." even in letters, though he (bless his heart) suggested gently that it would be fine if I dropped it after I was no longer his student. He's a southern gentleman, and the "Dr." fits with the entire relationship.

Lydia, I am completely charmed by the picture of it. :-)

I'm just saying that I don't see the matter as being as big a deal as you do.

On an individual level, it's really unimportant and not worth mentioning. Calling one's professor by his first name is not a sin. But on a societal level, on an institutional level, the movement away from honorifics is driven by ideology - as the Kreuter article proves - and is of a piece with the destruction of everything else that was good in our culture.

But to require that all girls wear dresses to class and that men not wear denim pants, that professors wear ties and possibly even suits, all of which I'm guessing from other things you have written that you would want--no, I don't see that as a goal to be pursued.

We obviously disagree. Yes, I would say it's a goal to be pursued and pursued vigorously. It wouldn't solve everything, but it would be a major step in the right direction. For Christians, the respect that we have for our fellow man should be reflected in the way we dress and behave generally. For those who are not on board, it is useful to recall that while everyone understands that action flows from belief, there is a synergistic process involved - we tend to conform our beliefs to our actions. Outward form changes behavior.

Even in the aggregate, though, I see more folks who insist rigorously on titles seemingly out of insecurity—as if the conferring of a Ph.D. effected some kind of ontological preferment over the rest of the species—

Yes, that's one of the unintended consequences of dropping the convention. The use of honorifics has now become a matter of personal initiative, which reveals insecurities. Instead of a barely noticeable social backdrop, it has risen to the surface, to the level of consciousness, and everyone has to worry about what they're going to do about it, and how their motives will be perceived. Social chaos. One of the benefits of social conventions is that insecurities are mercifully disguised.

The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus is credited with giving us "Neuhaus' Law" in matters of religion: Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed. The same principle applies to good behavior generally, human nature being what it is. Where the use of honorifics is optional, it will sooner or later be proscribed: those who use honorifics will be suspected of pride, elitism, insecurity, lack of confidence, and other unsavory motives, to the point where no one wants to be tainted with the association.

Take a look at any newspaper from a Western city before the 1960s, Mark, and you will find little to support a theory of regional informality "with a deep and long history".

We may be talking about slightly different things, Jeff. I am not saying that the type of informality where one doesn't show basic respect for oneself or others was practiced, or that I approve of that. Of course all Americans historically have shown a type of formality at formal events, certainly including church. The question is the level of formality proper to the classroom and the academic vocation. I don't see anything properly unique to either of those, but I am sympathetic to those who do. It all depends on a number of underlying assumptions.

But i can assure you that the type of informality I referred to does indeed have "a deep and long history". As i said, i have my parents and grandparents understandings, and anyone familiar with Union soldier's diaries from any army knows that the differences were not subtle at all. Westerners did not have romantic visions of war and saw no use in formalities. You could fill many books with quotations from soldiers not much more subtle than "the Easterners sure look pretty and march like they are on a parade ground, but too bad they spend all their time with formalities that they never learn how to fight". The westerners took immense pride in their abilities and victories and chalked it up to not worrying overmuch about formalities. And this opinion held true right up the chain of command to the top, and who could disabuse them of this notion when in fact a westerner did have to come east to win the war.

So in my view the relevant question is what is education? Better still, what is learning? Is it a formal enterprise? If so, then certain levels of formality are appropriate. If not not. I say properly understood it isn't. Others disagree. Things change over time. Now it is far less likely I need to take knowledge from a local authority. So their status is diminished, and the respect accrues in a more meritocratic fashion to those who take the time to learn what matters most. I think this is the unspoken subtext of this debate that determines a lot of what one thinks about the "social chaos" you are referring to.

Bruce, even with the use of the first name, I notice that you have the "Father" in there as well. That's already an honorific. I think that priests who go out of their way to ASK that people call them "Fr. Bill" are probably undermining the respect for the office of priesthood in a slight way (more than likely, without intending that).

Lydia, I agree that Jeff's psychological projection may be overblown a bit. Nevertheless, there is an overall trend here that he is picking up on that is valid: the removal of honorifics in general is a trend against a social custom rooted in a respect for accomplishment and for authority, and the direct opposition to that custom often stems directly out of disagreement with for kind of respect. Where it does not spring out of those, it even more often stems from a lack of perspective, or a simple lack of thought, about what the new "informal" modes of address really mean. In a hurry to appear more comfortable with "comfortable" modes of address (even though such modes may be more uncomfortable with some individuals), the professor may simply be putting on philosophical clothing that he knows nothing about because he has swallowed a perspective without thought.

In my alma mater, a college started specifically in direct opposition to the collapse of Catholic higher education in the 60's, they still retain the custom of addressing EVERYONE in the classroom as Mr. or Ms., as a sign of respect for the study of the material, in order to avoid overly personal commentary: the discussion is supposed to be about the material studied. Outside of the classroom, "Dr." is generally applied to professors. And in classrooms women are required to wear skirts or dresses and men are required to wear dress pants and collared shirts - again, to help ensure that people take the classroom seriously, as something worthy of effort and fore-thought.

In general, customs often exist to bolster or support values and principles that subsist as a general background social good, without being essential to that social good. Failure to follow the custom on one occasion does not destroy the subsisting social background. But an explicit war on the custom may do so over time. More importantly, a war on the very concept that customs are to be supported and followed most of the time, for most situations, is inherently anti-conservative and cannot but damage society itself, since so much of culture is passed on through custom. It is necessarily a matter of degree as to where the current custom is at a given moment on a given practice (such as the honorific "Dr."), whether the practice is followed 95%, or 60%, or 30%, but even at 30%, it can remain in the memory of all as a possible way of acting and can thus be a "custom" that is still in the process of being eradicated (and, therefore, viable and capable of being revived).

Lydia, I agree that Jeff's psychological projection may be overblown a bit.

Welcome back, Tony. You've been greatly missed around here.

Yes, I suppose my psycho-analyses was a bit on the hyperbolic side. But I think it can still be saved. If we simply add "in principle" to the opening statement, I think it works:

"The first thing we know about any professor who rejects honorifics in principle ..."

Many, of course, prefer to avoid honorifics not out of principle, but out of habit or some vague nod to their belief in equality. Many others have absorbed the Marxian sociology I described on a sub-conscious level. There is a trickle down effect to the work-a-day world. I once worked with a woman who refused to use honorifics in her business correspondence with school superintendents because "they're no better than anyone else".

I'm looking at a third category: Neither a person who avoids honorifics on some strong egalitarian principle, as if he would be bothered if students (including graduate students) called him "Dr.," nor a person who unthinkingly "allows" students to drop the honorific, not realizing what this "means," but a person who adopts a principle that with graduate students at least he will leave it as a matter of preference to the students because he's so much on fire for the discipline and doesn't want to distract any attention from that.

I realize that I probably haven't done a very good job picturing this type of person, but it's pretty vivid to me, and it has a quality all its own that simply isn't captured by any of the above categories.

It's undeniable that such a person disagrees with Jeff, and perhaps with Tony, about the enduring meaning and importance of honorifics. After all, if he didn't disagree, he'd presumably think it important to ask that students who try the first name instead call him "Dr.," or he'd find some way to get the word out and make it know that that's what he wants. So obviously, such a person thinks the honorific is, at least in teacher-student relationships at X level, dispensible for his purposes. But that very dispensibility is connected inextricably with a particular (and in a sense masculine, though the teacher of this kind might be female) focused-ness on the task to be done. That has its own charm and serves its own value as a societal "thing."

Jeff, what do you think about calling clergy by their first name e.g. "Father Bill", "Father John", etc...?

Bruce, as you might have guessed I strongly dislike the trend. Priests in the traditionalist orders of the Catholic Church are called Fr. LastName. That's how we address all clergy, even those who belong entirely to the new rite. I've never had any priest object to it. Although we do know one priest whom we call Fr. Firstname because his last name is, for me, virtually unpronounceable! :-) But that's probably just because he has a thick accent and we never hear his last name pronounced by English speakers.

I believe there are religious orders in the Church where the first name has always been customary. And I believe that is also true among the Byzantines, at least some of them. But in general, the move to first names is intended to make a statement, and it's the statement that's the problem.

Lydia, what you are describing is indifference. There will always be the indifferent. And I am sympathetic: a professor shouldn't have to worry about such things. It should be a natural part of the whole academic backdrop, assumed and for the most part unnoticed. It's unfair to expect individual professors to care as much as I believe they should, or to make students uncomfortable by sticking their necks out on this issue. But I would prefer that professors whose hearts are in the right place begin to make connections that are ordinarily outside their purview. The decline of honorifics is intimately related to the decline of language, dress, and public morality in general. If one doesn't know exactly where and when to make a stand without having one's efforts backfire (an important consideration), there are "ground floor" opportunities if one looks out for them. Printing a directory. Running a committee meeting. Speaking of one's colleagues in the presence of students. Etc. This whole thing came unraveled because of a militant minority of leftist agitators. Only a determined minority of a better persuasion can bring it back around.

When I taught "Human Being & Citizen" to freshmen at the University of Chicago under the aegis of Amy Kass, she advised that one address students in class by their last names - e.g., "Miss Abel," "Mr. Baker," etc. She thought it could be helpful to mark the passage from childhood/high school to adulthood/college in this way.

That has been my custom ever since - even when it has led to some awkward situations. (For example, at U. of C., I had a student whose last name was - no kidding - "Celestial-One" - and she was very smart and gregarious, so I was constantly saying: "yes, Miss Celestial-One?" instead of "yes, Saasha?")

Meanwhile, I have never asked my students to address me as anything more than "Mr. Burton" - but, I must admit, it doesn't half bug me when they think to say "Dr." or "Prof." instead.

I don't need to enforce my titles. I can command the room without having to use those crutches. It sounds to me, Dr. Culbreath, as if you can't quite pull that off and have to fall back on some kind of institutional folderol.

There's a cattle town just north of here that has hosted a rodeo for 91 years. In the museum you will see early photographs with rodeo cowboys dressed in suits(!)

What type of suits were the participants wearing in these photographs? In early California, the rodeo was a very grand and formal affair because of the Mexican influence. The American rodeo and the Mexican rodeo were very different with entirely different cultural traditions, the latter being highly formal (not sure of the relationship to the charro tradition,) and the former not. But then I understand that cowboys started to be seen as fashion icons after Buffalo Bill's flamboyant Wild West Show gained popular cultural status. Tail wagging the dog I guess.

the removal of honorifics in general is a trend against a social custom rooted in a respect for accomplishment and for authority, and the direct opposition to that custom often stems directly out of disagreement with for kind of respect.

I think this is highly dubious. While some moan about the U. S. being a meritocracy, others complain that we aren´t sufficiently so. I think we are quite obviously highly meritocratic and I see no problems with Americans giving respect to accomplishment.

And the number of titles has dramatically expanded in the last decades. I don't favor this trend. Who the honorific ¨Dr¨ applies to now has dramatically expanded, presumably because of the rise of the German research model of education that the U. S. adopted nearly wholesale in the mid 19th century. Soon everybody will be a doctor, just as now nearly everyone claims the title of ¨professional¨ (though not an honorific), which used to have a specific meaning. There is a question of legitimacy here, and the fact is that honorifics are highly inflationary. All told this is a highly unstable environment. Maybe the vast expansion in honorifics has something to do with the decline in their observation? I don't think over-generalizing in this environment is a good idea.

Yes, I would say it's a goal to be pursued and pursued vigorously. It wouldn't solve everything, but it would be a major step in the right direction. For Christians, the respect that we have for our fellow man should be reflected in the way we dress and behave generally.

I'm in basic sympathy with your point in the original post, but I guess I just can't understand this. The principle makes perfect sense, to be sure, but when applied to the specifics of dress that you and Lydia have been discussing - to any specifics at all, really, apart from deliberately grotesque ones - it becomes sort of... absurd.

I'm a doctoral candidate myself (in English, not that it matters). Three years into it, and all but done. I observe the proprieties when it comes to known honorifics and fall back upon "sir" and "madame" in the absence of 'em. All the same, I've never worn a suit or tie in my life, and I hope very much never to do so even once. They are ridiculous articles of clothing - the tie especially - and there is literally nothing that I or those around me would get out of me wearing them that could not be attained through recourse to some other suitably modest attire.

In short, I have to ask: in what possible sense am I showing more respect for my fellow man by wearing a suit and tie instead of blue jeans and a t-shirt? How does any of this improve the deference I'm able to offer to authority, the intellection of which I'm capable in study, the legitimacy and/or justice of my relations with one man or another?

I've never worn a suit or tie in my life, and I hope very much never to do so even once.

They don't make you dress up to defend your thesis? I've never heard of that.

Granted, there is a marked difference in dress habits across disciplines. In mathematics, almost everyone wears jeans. In music, almost everyone wears a suit. My argument for not wearing a suit in teaching physics or chemistry is that wearing the suit will not make the reaction or experiment go faster. Nature doesn't care. On the other hand, music is a social process and social conventions are what music is all about, so wearing a suit is a reflection of that fact. Jazz historians might wear jeans, but classical historians usually wear suits.

I make one exception: there is a very rare breed of student, not necessarily the best and brightest, who comes by my first name, naturally. I can't explain why. I just know that they have a rare jazz-like personality in the midst of a classical setting and it would seem strange for them to call me by my professional title.

You undoubtedly command your classroom by attention to detail. Some of those details convey expectations: Do you put something like

Billy Devon,
Intro to Phil

at the top of the syllabus that you hand out each semester, or do you use something like this?

Dr. William P. Devon
Introduction to Philosophy

If the latter, we can be relatively sure that a freshman student is not going to start out in the second class by calling you "Billy".

some kind of institutional folderol.

Sorry, but a custom that spans most campuses and last many decades cannot be repudiated as "institutional folderol". I suppose you might say that wearing academic regalia at graduations is "institutional folderol" as well. But you would be wrong: customs widely shared and are normally participated / observed are what make a culture an integrated reality instead of mere personal idiosyncracy. The use of situation-suitable names is one custom that supports the overall culture. The fact that you can manage to run a classroom the way you want it run without explicitly mentioning a definite naming practice may mean that you are relying on an already existing set of customs and expectations that the students are well aware of. It does not lead to the conclusion that culture-driven naming practices are irrelevant.

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